Untitled

(secret bonus: the other side of her tag)

it’s been a few weeks, I suppose we should check up on the AHSGSHGAFB?!

ajdhf.

well that’s just,,,

REXCELLENT

HELL

YES

HELL

FUCKING

YES.

HAIL TO THE QUEEN

LONG MAY SHE REIGN!

this year we’re doing a much-beloved character from classic literature, “Dracula with inappropriate straw hat”

thanks everyone, may your weens be hollow and your candy be many!

she’s… (WEXTER! here girl!) she’s a… a…..

she’s a T. Rex.

GOTTEM!

ERASERHEAD BABY.

ohshit

everything will be fine.

@vividaway​ Randall Munroe is an internet cartoonist who runs the ‘xkcd’ online comic series, which has run from 2006 up to today, with new comics every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Xkcd isn’t an ongoing story, just a series of funny, wholesome, depressing, or oddly scientifically informative comics.

In 2010, Randall’s fiance was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. He didn’t share too many details at first, but things tended to bleed into his comics: sometimes funny, sometimes sad.

Often in this time, other cartoonists would write in guest comics for Randall, or he’d put in short filler pieces, to try and fill space while nonstop cancer treatments took up most of his time.

In 2012, he posted a comic called ‘Two Years’, about the time since the diagnosis. It’s the one that hasn’t yet been posted here (although parts of it are included in the other comics), and it commemorates some of the things that had happened in the two years since the diagnosis.

There are representations of Randall and his fiance being together for her treatment, worrying together, traveling the world, and getting married. It’s still depressing, but it’s a lot more hopeful, showing how they’ve still managed to have happy moments together, and things will still get better.

Themes of cancer continued in xkcd, but they increasingly became less about fear and nihilism, and more about hope, or just cool facts related to cancer.

At the top of this post is the comic posted in 2017: Seven Years. In it, Randall and his wife are traveling more, trying to have fun and continue old and new hobbies, with cancer ever-present in the background of it all. At the end, the two of them observe the 2017 solar eclipse, and despite all the uncertainty that comes with the thought of another seven years, agree to watch the 2024 eclipse together too.

There are just about no cancer comics between that one and the most recent comic, the one I posted: Ten Years, written in 2020. It’s by far the most hopeful of the three in the little series: the two of them are happy, they’re playing with rabbits and riding on handcarts and going out hiking and stargazing, together. At the end, Ten Years breaks the format with a conversation in which they talk about how unbelievable it is that it’s been so long, and share their worries as well as their hopes. It even ends on a much more lighthearted joke about immortality.

It’s a good comic. Definitely in my top two comics wherein internet cartoonists express emotions about an illness suffered by their wife.

on survival

>they classify gravitational wells with a large number of stars as milk

>they call their own region of space a particularly milky milk place

>when they're born they need milk or milk substitutes to survive

>name their whole taxonomic class of animals after glands that produce milk

>whole entire industries dedicated to the production of milk

strokes beard wisely

Yuh,

big AW in the studio, be prepared young traveler...

*beat drop*

Yall little minds aren't prepared for my wizardry, casting all my spells bending minds and reality, your world is a lie, I made it, call that a trickery, your spells are decadent, don't have it in you anymore, my long game victory

there's no kingdom I couldn't conquer,, if I wanted to, foes in war too simple,, getting bored of you, battling puny mortals ain't as fun as it used to, I surpassed what you can comprehend, make me the god of you

*music cuts to choir sample*

*music returneth*

but everyone calls themselves a god these days, regular ass wizards, playing pretend, you think you figured it out, you just stopped aging man, godhood, immortality, is 'bout something else

the tales of my battles are spread far across the lands, killed a dragon over here, flattened a city over there,, my powers uncontrollable, my flow boggling minds again, was sealed away for aeons once, now sealing the potholes of the walk of fame- we're done

I know we all love the ‘humans are space orcs’ concept… but imagine, onboard the new ship they’ve been assigned to, the human meets an actual space orc. A massive monster… fangs and tusks and scars and a battle-hardened stare, looming over all the other life forms on the ship in its thick indestructible armour it refuses to remove. It barely drinks, it doesn’t need sleep, its massive shoulders are heavy with the terrible things it has experienced. Compared to the squishy & delicate human body, this thing is a walking tank.

… Except instead of hating/ignoring one another, the human and the monster start bonding over both coming from death planets. The human is excited to find a life form who doesn’t quiver with fear at the vague description of a jellyfish and the monster is ecstatic to meet someone who understands the feeling of being bitten by a qua’lem (cats are pretty close). They sit together and compare dangerous animals and locations as the other aliens look on in confusion and fear… oh, you also have dense jungles of deadly hidden predators, boiling acid lakes, tamed predatory killers, and areas with horrendously high and low temperatures? Sick!! 

It doesn’t take long before the two of them become totally inseparable. The human loves not feeling like some kind of crazy outsider and the monster is overjoyed they’ve finally found an equal in this unkillable marshmallow.